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A blend of the nouns floor and wardrobe, the colloquial humorous noun floordrobe designates an untidy heap of discarded clothing left on the floor of a room, instead of stored in a wardrobe.
The noun floordrobe was probably coined on various occasions by different persons, independently from one another.
This noun occurs, for example, in the following from a review of the Canteen, an Italian restaurant on Portobello Road, London—review by David Ellis, published in The London Standard (London, England) of Thursday 12th December 2024 [page 8, column 4]:
Pasta, all made daily in house, could make a claim as London’s best. Scarves of fettuccine lay in a floordrobe on the plate, thoroughly worked through with veal ragù and under scattershot Parmesan.
These are, in chronological order, the earliest occurrences of the noun floordrobe that I have found:
1-: From Janet had a feeling, and two months later (!), she had a neologistic first prize, by Bob Levey, published in The Washington Post (Washington, District of Columbia, USA) of Friday 7th October 1994:
Janet is one of about 3,000 wordsmiths who tried their luck at Levey’s August/September think-up-a-word contest. […]
The challenge that Janet and her fellow neologists faced was:
Children have the nasty habit of leaving their dirty clothes not in the hamper, not in the washer, not in the incinerator, but in a scraggly heap in the middle of the floor. This heap is called…
Her winning answer: Pedopile.
[…]
Almosts and Nearlies for August/September were:
Floorclothesure: Anita Stevens, of Arlington; Edith Eisenberg, of Potomac; and Elizabeth Stripe, of Falls Church.
[…]
Floordrobe: Elizabeth Hogan, of Southeast Washington, and the team of Cathy and Dave Hostetler.
2-: From an article about Earth Day, by Michael Glantz, a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, published in The Daily Herald (Provo, Utah, USA) of Monday 2nd October 1995 [page B6, column 3]:
When I was a kid about to return to school following a great summer of freedom from math and English, I had chores to complete. My room had to be cleaned up and my “floor-drobe” picked up and put away so I would have a new start for the school year.
3-: From Wardrobe of the week, published in The Scotsman (Edinburgh, Midlothian, Scotland) of Saturday 14th September 2002 [Magazine: page 20, column 1]:
SARA FORAGE AND ANNA MARIE SCOTT
Sara […] and Anna Marie work for Purple PR, whose clients include some of the top names in lifestyle, fashion and beauty
Where do you keep your clothes?
Sara: They’re spilling out both wardrobes, a chest of drawers and an ottoman.
Anna Marie: All of my stuff is organised by colour and glamour rating, though most of it usually ends up on the floordrobe.
4-: From The Observer (London, England) of Sunday 11th April 2004 [page 10, column 3]:
What’s the word? Diaper diva n. a singing 7-year-old
A diaper diva wears a belt, a sparkly scarf, cute cuffs, a posh pony, gold lip gloss and glow-in-the-dark body pencil, is years past singing into a hairbrush and expects at least PlayStation 2’s Dance UK game. […]
[…] She has a ‘floordrobe’ (a floor covered in clothes) that her mother ‘would never have got away with’.
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